Asynchronous Development in Gifted Children

When you’re parenting gifted or twice-exceptional kids, you often feel lost and alone — like nobody will ever truly get what you live on a day-to-day basis. I felt that way, and it’s one of the reasons I created RLL in the first place… I hoped to bring other parents of tough kids together — and to find my own community. I’m so thrilled to welcome one of my favorites to share a post with you today. Cait is the author of my-little-poppies, and ispart of ourcommunity. She’s in the trenches with challenging kids, my friends, and she has so much to share. I’ll let her get to it…

Of all the definitions of giftedness that are floating around out there, my favorite is this one from the Columbus Group, because it touches upon giftedness as asynchrony:

Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally. (The Columbus Group, 1991).

What is asynchronous development?

Asynchronous development is one of the hallmarks of giftedness. While most children develop in a relatively uniform manner, gifted learners are asynchronous in their development. And the more gifted the child, the more asynchronous that child may be. There can be huge differences between a gifted child’s physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development. A gifted child can have the intelligence of an adult with the social-emotional development of a child. It is often said that gifted children are “many ages at once”, they are quite literally out-of-sync.

What does asynchronous development look like in a child?

It looks like this guy, right here:

My son, Leo, could be the poster child for asynchronous development. Chronologically, he is 7-years-old. Physically, he looks like your average 7-year-old but we all know you can’t judge a book by its cover. We had Leo tested one year ago and results indicted that his cognitive abilities are above the 99.9th percentile. What that means is that, intellectually, he is functioning at a level more than twice his chronological age. Yet, socially and emotionally he is very much seven and – in some instances- he can act much younger. In certain situations, Leo appears unbelievably mature. At other times, however, he can throw a fit to rival that of any 2-year-old.

I could provide countless examples of Leo’s asynchrony on any given day.

I could tell you about how toddler Leo would often get into squabbles with friends at play dates because his friends were not following the complicated rules he had created for their play.

I could tell you about the time Leo, age 5, was playing with his friends and then stopped suddenly to comment about the beauty of a nearby garden trellis. “Guys! Look! Doesn’t that lattice-work remind you of a portcullis?”

I could tell you about the time Leo finished The Hobbit at age six. He discussed the book in such detail and depth and yet he was unable to watch age-appropriate television programs because he was too sensitive to themes. Television terrified him for years.

I could tell you about the time he and I had a heartfelt conversation about the impact of our town’s new housing developments on our local coyote population and then, twenty-four hours later, I was under-arming him out of a robotics event because he was unable to wait patiently for his turn to use the most popular robot.

I could tell you how Leo paints better than most adults I know and yet he is unable to get through a homeschool assignment without losing half a dozen pencils. Last winter he painted this:

the very same month that he lost his sock from within his boot in four feet of snow.

I could tell you how Leo is fascinated by the Bible and can recount passages in detail and discuss themes and content with great understanding and yet he is unable to sit quietly during mass and is the class clown of his religious education class.

I could tell you how Leo is doing fourth grade math and yet cannot make it through dinner without spilling his beverage or falling out of his chair.

My favorite example of Leo’s asynchrony, however, is one I tell often. When Leo was 2-years-old, he was obsessed with dinosaurs- like so many 2-year-old boys. He talked about dinosaurs from sun up until sun down and we read every dinosaur book we could get our hands on. And then, one night, I found him sobbing in his bed, unable to sleep. I snuggled him in my arms and asked him to tell me what was wrong. “Mama,” he sobbed, “The dinosaurs are extinct and the scientists don’t know why. What if we all die, and become extinct for some unknown reason?!” At just two years old, he was petrified of mass human extinction and death. This is a perfect illustration of the huge divide between Leo’s cognitive skills and his emotions. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been for him to emotionally process his thoughts?

Tips for Parents of Asynchronous kids

Become acquainted with your child’s “many ages”, his unique asynchronous development. Understand that asynchrony may not be normal for most children but it is a completely normal aspect of giftedness.

Adjust your expectations. One of the most difficult things about having an asynchronous child is managing expectations- both your own expectations and those of others.

I don’t know about you guys, but I often find myself getting frustrated with my son. He speaks like a mini-adult and can have amazing conversations. And yet, when frustrated or overwhelmed, he can dissolve into a mushy mess in seconds. I have to constantly remind myself of his asynchrony and think of Leo in terms of his many different ages.

Other adults may expect too much too soon from gifted children. Many mistakenly assume that a gifted child will easily secure As in school and behave well in class. Giftedness and achievement are two entirely separate entities.

Think outside the box when it comes to your child’s education

We live in a society that, sadly, values sameness. Those who are different, especially those children who are different, often face a harder road. Advocate for your child early and often.

Meet your child where he is at, based on his current levels of development. Maybe your third grader is reading at a college level, doing seventh grade math, and writing at a second grade level. That’s okay. Allow your child to soar, but provide support for any areas of weaknesses.

It can be difficult to find reading material for gifted children. Many are capable of reading at a high school or college level, but the themes and content of books may be too much for the child’s social-emotional level.

It is challenging to educate asynchronous children in the public education setting. Think outside of that proverbial box! Your child may benefit from an alternative educational placement Acceleration, online learning, homeschooling, and even unschooling often work better for this population.

Asynchrony is often displayed in a gifted child’s lagging executive functioning skills (attention, organization, behavior, and self-regulation skills). Your child may need additional support and scaffolding in this area.

Intellectual peers are important

Leo’s vocabulary and references are often years ahead of those of his peers. Remember my portcullis example above? It’s a perfect example of the divide that happens with gifted children and their age-mates. I’m Leo’s mother and I had to Google portcullis on my phone when it happened, folks. To this day, Leo and his younger siblings will create complicated play scenarios. One afternoon, they were Native Americans foraging for berries, building teepees, and hunting bison. Another afternoon, they were ancient Egyptians engaging in a mummification ritual, complete with sarcophagus. These games are certainly not typical of most 3, 5, and 7-year-olds.

Remember that it is normal for gifted children to have difficulty relating to their peers. Your child may need social support and scaffolding.

Provide opportunity for your child to interact with older children and adults. Find a mentor in your community.

Help your child work through and manage frustration

Your child’s asynchronous development is frustrating to deal with, isn’t it? Just imagine for a moment how incredibly frustrating it must be to be your child.

Everyone has unique strengths and weaknesses. We all have things we are good at and things we need to work upon. Talk about this with your child and use your child’s passions to address weaknesses.

Teach your child to manage frustration. Coping skills are among the most important of life skills.

When the going gets rough, do not be afraid to seek help. When doing so, be sure to find care providers who specialize in gifted and twice exceptional learners.

Find a community

Parenting an asynchronous gifted child can be a lonely venture. Parents often feel that they cannot speak openly about their struggles for fear of being judged harshly. Find a community of parents and educators of similar children. Seek out these individuals both online and in your community. If you cannot find a local group, create one. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be able to openly discuss these issues without fear of judgment. You are not alone.

I think of asynchronous development as the very essence of giftedness. Gifted children are not better than their peers, they are just different. And just like other populations that differ significantly from the norm, gifted children need support in order to thrive. I honestly believe that if the public understood giftedness as asynchrony, the gifted world would change for the better.

What are some examples of your child’s asynchrony? Leave a comment and tell us — we’d love to hear your stories.

Cait Fitz is a school psychologist and mom to three amazing little people. She chronicles her unexpected journey into homeschooling at My Little Poppies. Cait is also a contributor at Year Round Homeschooling. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

For more information about parenting gifted kids, check out:

So, so helpful! Thanks for this!
Regarding finding reading material, befriend your local children’s librarian, they are trained to help you find age-appropriate materials for your advanced learner. Also, “Some of My Best Friends Are Books” by Halstead is an enormous help in finding books for advanced readers!

”
I could tell you how Leo is doing fourth grade math and yet cannot make it through dinner without spilling his beverage or falling out of his chair.” That is SO my five-year-old! Literally, he’s finishing up 4th grade math, and is unbelievably klutzy (not to mention prone to sobbing meltdowns because life doesn’t happen the way he wants it to). He’s especially sensitive to being tired — takes in so much at once that it wears him out, and he’s too old to really nap but if I don’t insist on a quiet/rest time, he’s falling apart by 5pm. We applied to (and were accepted to) the Davidson Institute this year, and even though I don’t know anyone local yet, it’s been such a phenomenal resource. I can’t very well approach the other homeschool moms I know (my age) and say, “my five year old wants to do chemistry this summer; do you know any good books for him to use?” But the other parents in Davidson get it.

Hi Christine!
We are DYS, too, so I’ll probably see you around those parts :)

OT helped us with the falling out of chairs piece. And patience. And a wiggle cushion. Leo still gets a quiet time for the reasons you mentioned here.

Michaela Estes

Just the article I needed to read today. Leo’s painting is breathtaking! Asynchronous development examples of my 4-year-old: reading easy readers, doing 4 digit addition and 4 digit subtraction (w/ manipulatives-he’s in a fabulous Montessori preschool), and writing sentences with punctuation. He also threw a massive tantrum the other day because there wasn’t a “good enough” toy in a geocache box. :/ He’s highly sensitive…he bawled after I read him The Giving Tree last night, wondering how we could make the tree grow again. He loves people so much he can hardly contain himself. He says hi to everyone he meets and walks around saying, “I just love EVERYBODY!” He thought it was just fascinating that the dinosaur micropachycephalosaurus has the longest name of all dinosaurs at 23 letters. He made me count all the letters of all the other dinosaurs in his book and figure out how many more the micropachy had (and then we made tri fold boards out of several of them). He can sense the very second I am not happy about something. He only sees the good in everyone. I love him so much and hope to preserve his heart as long as I can. I don’t have anyone outside of family to really talk about him with. It’s so hard. Thank you for letting us share our asynchronous learners in a judgement-free zone.

Thank you, Michaela! Sometimes he paints like that and sometimes it’s typical 7 year old paintings. So interesting and weird and wonderful. I love these asynchronous kids. Are you on Raising Poppies yet (facebook)? C’mon over :)

Juli ST

I really needed to read this today. We’re in a tough week with DS7’s frustration levels – I think he’s tired from a busy end-of-school-year month – and at times his behavior just seems so far behind his age. His school work, however, is light years ahead. I’ve been thinking more about executive function recently because this describes very well what he’s missing. The trouble is, by his chronological age, he’s not actually “missing” them. That is to say, he isn’t behind as a 7yo. His reactions are over the top because of overexcitabilities, but his coping skills are that of a 7yo, maybe 6yo. But his reading skills, for example, are that of a 16yo. And then he has the fine motor skills of a 10yo. It’s so frustrating for everyone involved. We try to calm the drama so that his younger brothers don’t bear the brunt of his meltdowns, but it’s not easy. It’s also really hard to get help, because insurance won’t cover anything for him since he’s technically not “behind.” Sigh.

My son *ALWAYS* has trouble at the beginning and end of the school year, so I feel your pain. And the technically not behind thing drives me bonkers! We have a new FB group called Raising Poppies- c’mon over and talk about this stuff. You’ll feel right at home :)

Denise

Like other responses, I really needed to read this today! We had an asynchronous situation last week that caused me to have to explain my Kindergarten-aged child’s behavior to three different parents without sounding like I was making excuses for her and without going on and on about it. I had a preschool teacher 2 years ago ask me point blank if I’ve ever said “No” to my child! She doesn’t have meltdowns and handles disappointments well. She’s logical and reasonable. But every week there is something that goes horribly wrong. She’s super sensitive and can’t handle being in a group of kids, especially if it’s noisy or chaotic, and will hide. But she can also write a poem that will melt my heart, or she’ll point out the irony in something. She’s been in PT, OT and vision therapy trying to catch up to her agemates’ physical abilities, but she’s usually about 6 months behind what they’re able to do. I avoid telling other parents and teachers that she’s gifted because of the eye rolls! I’d love for other parents and teachers to “get it” and try to help rather than scold or avoid her. I’m trying to establish a mentor relationship with another girl who’s gifted and a few years older. Hopefully it will last.

I love the “Do you ever tell her no?/ You need to tell her no more often./ and She needs to be around more people who pick at her so she develops a thick skin.” Some of my mothers favorites. My mom liked to call her “Nanas little rat.” and she would just melt down crying “Nana, I am not rat. I am a little girl.” My mom thought she should be ok with being “picked at” like that. My thought was if you know it bothers her why would you say/do those things. My daughter also hates to be tickled, we think she has some sensory processing issues. My mom insisted on tickling her. Its like just don’t do that and she don’t freak out… She is 3 will be 4 in October but can have conversations with adults about whatever is currently going on in the news. Her and her dad often have conversations about the presidential candidates that are currently announced for the 2016 election. He is a political junkie and I think she is going to be as well. Then on the other side she can not handle friendly, simple picking that most kids in our family find funny. It drives me insane that my family does not understand nor do they what to.

Brianne

Thank you so much for this. It’s been a rough couple of weeks with our 2E second-grader, and sometimes I need the reminder that he’s not SO FAR off course for who HE is, vs. who other 2nd graders are! He’s 8 years old and in the past week we’ve had these things happen:
1) The 24-bar concerto he wrote for strings and piano was performed for him by the local youth Philharmonic;
2) He couldn’t stop pestering a little girl in his class on the playground because she was being “bossy” and “monopolizing” his best friend, and he melted down three days in a row because he was unable to problem-solve and let it go;
3) He began writing a “series” of stories called the Opera house mysteries, about a gang of elementary-aged savants who travel to all the great opera houses in the world and solve crimes;
4) He knocked over the classroom mailboxes and created a huge mess, which was both a total accident AND the result of him being entirely disorganized and not following his teacher’s directions;
5) He started working on creating his summer reading list, which includes an obscure book by JM Barrie (but he just “has to” read it, because his semester project at school this year was on the original manuscript of Peter Pan and he loves Barrie’s “style”)
6) He began fixating on the details of his aunt’s recent brain surgery and had a hard time understanding the appropriate things to say to her (ie, “Your scar reminds me of Frankenstein; what kind of surgical screws did they use to put your skull back together?” is not the right content for a get-well card)
7) He introduced the construct “neither/nor” correctly into his conversational speech, but couldn’t keep his spelling words within the lines of his notebook paper and skipped an entire section of questions on his reading handout because he just didn’t “notice” them.
Asynchrony. It’s not for the faint of heart! :-)

I totally needed to hear this. My 7yo daughter hasn’t been tested for giftedness, but a number of educators, my personal experience, and my experiences with her would all concur that she falls somewhere on the gifted spectrum. (I was a gifted child myself) It’s been easy to tell the asynchronicity between her physical and cognitive development contrasted with emotional and social development, but this is the first time I’ve completely connected the dots that it’s because of giftedness. I’m starting to delve deeper into how to best help her along this journey.
– she tells intricate, magnificent stories over the course of weeks that include character development, but will break down in frustration in seconds when things don’t happen quickly enough for her.
– she was fascinated by my recent surgery and reenacted much of it (including anesthesia and post-op appointments) on her stuffed dolphin, but consistently can’t find toys she just played with.
– she’s extremely athletically gifted, but isn’t able to move up to the next level in her swim program because if she gets just a moment of down time, she’s doing underwater flips and other distracting stuff and not paying attention to her coaches or other kids around her.

Sometimes I can see the ‘she’s a little weird’ in other parents’ and kids’ faces, but I think she’s awesome and I want to continue to help her embrace who she is, and ROCK her unique self. :)

You are not alone, Erin! Have you joined our Raising Poppies group on facebook?

Heather Gill

This is my son(age 7)!!! I always use to get a kick out of people in telling us how smart he was and we must work at lot with him to learn that stuff, when honestly we really never had to do anything he just got it!!! He is obsessed about dinosaurs and sharks, we watch all sorts of shows and have books about them all!! But he will get so frustrated if he is trying to draw a shark and get just perfect.
And athletically he is amazing!! Every sport he tries he is great at, at 6 yrs old he played on a U8 hockey team and I was always amazed at his ability to figure out plays and anticipate where the puke was going. But he would have a complete melt down at the end of hockey and soccer practice and games because he didn’t want it to stop. Everyone would be staring at us, wondering why he was crying or if he got hurt. Though he have managed to keep them at a minimum over the last year. So glad to find the article!!!

I am very much thankful I came across your article Ms. Cait. I’m now enlightened to what bothered me, his being asynchronous in development. I sometimes get frustrated why is my 4 y.o. little boy can’t sit still during mass wherein he can memorize and read bible verses, prayers and enjoyed bible stories. Because he is an advanced reader he doesn’t like to answer’s k1 reading worksheet anymore that’s why I’m customizing it to fit his level. Good thing I homeschooled him, a self directed learner also, I think he’s on his way to unschooling approach. Parenting like these kids are really not easy more if you can’t find any person who share the same with yours. I am very much grateful to you. Thank you so much for sharing!

I love it, Darlene. Parenting asynchronous children is like a roller coaster ride. Never a dull moment and lots of twists and turns. Thanks for reading!

Sandy

Something to bear in mind though is that other gifted kids may not be intellectual peers either. Even leaving aside the issue of exceptionally and profoundly gifted kids, try putting together a child who is very aural and is a high school music geek who waxes lyrical over Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture and the kid the next row over in AP Chem, who is equally bright but thinks the pinnacle of musical achievement is Nikki Minaj.

Agreed, Sandy. It completely depends on the child. You have to try all different settings. We’ve had the most luck with multi-age groups.

Staci Narducci

Oh man, I really needed this. It explains my 8 year old daughter, SO much.

At age 4, feverish and sick with strep, on our way to the doctor she tells me “Mommy I just loooove having strep!….Not really, I was just being facetious.” But, also at 4, would climb to the top of the slide at the zoo playground and sit at the top and sob because she was terrified to the point that she was frozen with fear from going down the slide.

She has developed very detailed super hero’s and has slowly created a wonderful story line and creative names and quirky twists and wants to write her own comic book but is stuck because her sketching skills aren’t up to par with the pictures she see’s in her mind.

She scored 99% over all of her gifted testing in 1st grade and was off the charts in her 1st grade reading test, but spent many hours in the nurses office with stomach aches and headaches(always caused from stress, anxiety, or just plain exhaustion).

She will talk about deep complex issues that one would never imagine having with an 8 year old, but then break down for 30 minutes because we can’t get pizza for dinner tonight.

I have been feeling so hopeless about things. The disparity in her cognitive ability and her emotional regulation is strong, and NO ONE seems to understand why I struggle with such a mature and responsible 8 year old who in public is an ANGEL.

I hope you join our Raising Poppies group on FB. You will find kindred spirits there :)

Nunja Bitniss

I’m so relieved to find this. We are completely at our wits end trying to deal with my stubborn son, who has been diagnosed both gifted and ODD. He is so intelligent, and can negotiate like a politician, but he is so sensitive and easily wounded, carries grudges like trophies, and can’t make friends. He can be loving and sweet, funny and quick, then belligerent and selfish for no reason. Asynchronicity makes so much sense. I’ve submitted a request to your group to help me figure out how to lovingly parent such a difficult child. Thanks.

They are politicians for sure! I hope that Raising Poppies is helping!

Miriam Pia

I feel like I must have a kind of “door prize” in that my G&T son, who is now 19 years old was honestly no trouble to his parents at all throughout his entire childhood. Admittedly, we knew he would be “like that” as both his parents and all grandparents are. Perhaps his “gifts” are simply not terribly extreme, I don’t feel that my nor my son’s father’s giftedness is nearly as extreme as much of what I read about here and in the Hoagie’s newsletter about gifted kids. No reading university texts in elementary school or inventing new fully functional machinery using nothing but a bobby pin, a rubber band and an empty tin can. From much of what I have read I feel we are “abnormally highly intelligent but relatively ordinary”. I have written some novels and painted some paintings and my son’s father did program computers for fun which is now his career but even so, that’s pretty tame compared to the rocket that works from the old tin can – I mean, I still don’t even get how that kid did that!

Here is something I’ve learned: I and my husband are basically high-functioning. Our daughter is profoundly gifted. I like the idea of using “asynchronous” instead of gifted because nothing annoys me more than someone saying “oh but EVERY child has a gift!” Well, yes, but my child read the chemical ingredients on the back of the juice boxes at preschool when she was three. I am pretty sure that isn’t something that is typical. She tested off the charts for reading and comprehension when she was five. Math skills ditto.
I loved the description of Leo’s games, with all the complexities and imagination, but not being able to watch children’s shows on television because he was too sensitive. Lindsay was exactly the same way. Who knew that Sesame Street was so awful? And Swiper the Fox on Dora was mean, and that was just too much to handle?
Lindsay was called “cowboy” in her fifth grade class because she could not keep her chair on the floor. But she was able without seeming to have been paying attention, to answer any three-digit multiplication in seconds. Some she could do in her head.
Which brings me to my theory.
I think, and I believe I have some support in this, that Lindsay’s asynchrony is the SOURCE of her physical challenges. She needs to move, to fiddle, to fidget. One teacher told me she is a “kinetic learner”, which doesn’t mean that she is coordinated, but that when she processes things intellectually, her brain is creating kinetic energy in quantities that far exceed the “norm”. She MUST move to relieve the tension.
Her thought processes often seemed to come from nowhere, and she often couldn’t verbalize how she came to the conclusions she did, but they were perceptive, accurate and very sophisticated.
Her speech became more and more awkward as she got older and became more demanding of herself. So at 12 she was “diagnosed” and became officially “twice exceptional”. But it’s all part of the same asynchrony, it’s just that within the school district, and society in general, giftedness is still looked at as equivalent to high-functioning, and separate from any “special needs” issues. But truthfully, how hard is it to understand that when your brain is working 10 times faster than your mouth, you might have speech issues? And when you are going from point A to point G in three seconds while everyone else is stuck on point B or C, you might have trouble relating to other kids? And then stack the speech disorder on top of that? Social pragmatic skills deficit. Or maybe Asperger’s, or something that walks, talks and smells like Asperger’s but nobody wants to do the tests and label it, not that it would do any good anyway because you “treat it the same way”.
The only thing I can say I am pretty sure we did right in raising this child, who is now 19, is that we gave her our unconditional love and let her know that no matter what she decided to do, wear, study, read, or talk about, it was just right. She has always been very comfortable in her skin, even while being frustrated when something isn’t going right. It’s never about who she is, but definitely about how she processes the world.
It does level out. At least intellectually. I know that I still need to “scaffold” and support her even in college, when most normal kids have figured out the coping skills they need. Organization, asking for help, communicating with peers (still not solid…but when it’s an assignment, she is fierce about it), socializing with anyone not in her nerd world. I’ve had other parents tell me I should just cut her loose and let her sink or swim. I’m still firmly on the side of giving her a life raft and teaching her how to use it because she will most likely be too busy noticing how she can see the curvature of the earth to take time to pull the inflation cord. If she even realizes it has one…

I loved every bit of this, Amy! I love your theory. Bravo to you for supporting this child fully!

My favorite part was this, “The only thing I can say I am pretty sure we did right in raising this child, who is now 19, is that we gave her our unconditional love and let her know that no matter what she decided to do, wear, study, read, or talk about, it was just right. She has always been very comfortable in her skin, even while being frustrated when something isn’t going right. It’s never about who she is, but definitely about how she processes the world.”

YES!!

Tricia Lyall Murphy

My son was a intense baby, he cried all the time, never learned to crawl and at 9 months we finally decided it was time to teach him to roll over. When he first held a toy at 3 months he turned it around and around and was fascinated with it for well over an hour. This was my first break from his crying and demanding to be held. He tested into our school district’s Hi-Cap program last year. He was not happy there for reasons that are still a mystery to me. Fast forward to 5th grade. He is back in a regular classroom. He is brilliant but he loses everything. He is failing classes because he didn’t turn in the assignments that he had in his folder. Finding reading material that interests him is a nightmare. We finally discovered computer coding books as something that he is willing to read, holds his interest, and does not have inappropriate content. His teacher says he is ADHD and immature. (He still cries about a lot of things.) Thanks for this article, it gives me a lot of insight and hope! Also, I loved the part about the games the kids made up. Mine do it too, recently they played ‘covered wagon’ which I thought was charming until I discovered they were hunting & shooting at my 6 year old who played the roll of buffalo.

Sissa

I see that the people here are parents discussing their children, which is great, but I’m going to spin the table a bit and talk about personal experiences with myself. I’m a 20 year old bonafide adult who is profoundly gifted. I also have Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD, catapulting me into “twice exceptional” territory.
I’m reading about people who have concluded that their child’s hyper-activity is a direct result of their giftedness. Yes! That’s exactly it! My thoughts move so quickly and I they can’t flow when I’m sitting still! When my thoughts move, I move with them. I rock back and forth when I sit (in the autistic world, we call this stimming), and get up constantly to pace back and forth, and back and forth.
I’m extremely sensitive and hyper-empathetic (meaning I feel empathy extremely powerfully, to a sometimes painful degree) I cry at least once a day, honestly. Being gifted and having a love of learning, I have a large enough pool of knowledge to debate someone into knots on a very wide range of topics. That is, if I don’t burst into tears the first time someone insults my position. I react to so many situations like someone so much younger than my age, even though I intellectually act much older.
I also have a hyper-vivid imagination (Other people call it “hyper-active” but I don’t believe that imagination and creativity should have a negative connotation.) My focus isn’t stellar, but my imagination allows me to come up with new ideas at the speed of sound. That’s also a large portion of why I cannot sit still
As you’re probably noticing, a lot of my traits have “hyper” prefixes. It shouldn’t be surprising that this combination of traits leads to me being extremely, well, hyper. 
It’s so funny that whenever you see a really smart person on TV or in a book, they’re always the stoic, emotionless, robotic one, with “too much logic” to feel “petty” emotions. I mean have you even met a gifted person before?
If anyone needs advice on their children, I can try and make an attempt. I’m pretty much and expert on this by now.

Love this post, Cait. I loved reading the stories about Leo, as they remind me so much of MY 7 year old. SO glad to have found you & Colleen and the whole community. It is encouraging to know that I am not alone, and that there are resources for those of us who are newly trying to navigate this world.

Tiffany

Thank you for this. I sometimes forget to put myself in my son’s shoes, especially when he’s going through a growth spurt (physical, emotional or intellectual). Each spurt seems to increase his exhaustion and his meltdowns/attitude problems. However, he’s 5 years old but is very tall (4’2″) and definitely deals with inflated expectations regularly. People assume he’s older because of his size, vocabulary, intelligence, communication skills, etc. But he’s a 5 year old boy who, emotionally, is really a bit behind and likely has some kind of SPD (idiopathic toe walking, oral fixation, etc). But he’s constantly scanning, observing, learning… someone recently asked if he was blind because his eyes were constantly moving around instead of seeming to focus on anything! In reality, he was observing his surroundings. It’s how he’s like a human GPS and has been since he was 3 years old; able to tell you what direction you’re facing, and how to get just about anywhere in our town from anywhere. I need to remember that a brain moving that fast, processing that much information, must be exhausted. I’d probably melt down sometimes, too!

Antonia

Tiffany, have you had your son tested? My situation is similar to what you describe and I’m just wondering if testing would be beneficial. Thanks, Antonia

Jenny

So, HOW do I teach coping skills when I can’t get him to calm down and/or be mad at himself? I try and try. I don’t mean that disrespectfully. Just honestly. Thanks for any insight you can offer. :)

richard

Thank you for sharing this – “asynchronous” does such a better job of explaining “giftedness” than the word “gifted” itself. You’re right: being gifted conjures up images of musical prodigies, kids filling chalkboards with complex math and Tony Stark rebuilding a motorcycle engine at age six. It’s such an unfair stereotype, as it’s not an easy-breezy ride through life. My oldest child, at 8, shows the hallmarks of asynchronous development: he’s textbook ADHD, has always had a remarkably advanced vocabulary yet was delayed with speech development, has a keen interest in science and a phenomenal long-term memory (he brought up Chernobyl in great detail in the car one day… more than a year after I casually recounted the incident when he asked about nuclear power… age 4), he has a hard time relating to kids his age but gets along swimmingly with older kids and adults, but can melt down to 4-year-old level at the drop of a hat. Our second eldest (also a boy, and 4 years old) is starting to exhibit the same characteristics as his beloved big brother but with his own personal idiosyncrasies. It can be extremely frustrating to deal with, but at the same time I simply wouldn’t have it any other way – they’re both such colourful and enthusiastic kids. We have a 3rd boy (3 boys… god help us) but at 6 months it’s obviously far too early to tell.

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